How the Game Is Played

Ok, see, Barry, this is how this thing is supposed to work. You’ve very craftily built your political appeal by not appearing to be a politician despite being a politician, and that’s not an easy thing. You talk about Hope(TM) and Change(TM) and you play the nice guy, the argument-soothing middle child, and then you win stuff and, you know, good for you for playing the game well. Your staff, though, as I’ve mentioned before, needs to get on board your “nice” train or stop talking to the press. A case in point is your spokesman Bill Burton.

See, Barry, that tiny little union that endorsed you in Nevada might be ever so slightly pissed about that lawsuit that tried to shutter the at-large workplace caucuses. Just slightly, since they issued kind of a nasty Spanish-language radio ad denouncing Hillary for the lawsuit which, fingerprints aside, she actually didn’t do. But, in case you don’t speak Spanish, here’s what the man is saying, in part:

“Hillary Clinton supporters want to prevent people from voting in their workplace on Saturday. This is unforgivable. Hillary Clinton is shameless. Hillary Clinton should not allow her friends to attack our people’s right to vote this Saturday. This is unforgivable; there’s no respect.”

Now, the way this “nice” thing works is that you ask them to stop (with a wink and a nod, of course), remind people you had nothing to do with it and say something olive branch-y like “I think that Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton have historically and consistently been on the right side of civil rights issues.”

What you don’t do at this moment is let someone like Bill Burton respond to press inquiries like this:

“Coming from a campaign that is repeatedly launching absolutely false attacks against Senator Obama, it takes some chutzpah. The facts is their camp clearly would like to have worker’s voices silences [sic] and they need to live with that unfortunate position.”

Because, see, that sort of exposes you to charges that you’re a down-and-dirty politician like everyone else in the race, which is something you’ve been encouraging people not to see for a while now. Honey, it’s not even Super Tuesday yet. If you want to win, you’ve got to stay on message and that message that you’ve been messaging is that you’re a different kind of candidate. You need to try to stave off the inevitable realization that you’re just like everyone else as long as possible if you want to win.